


Back and Forth

by incendiary1 (trycatpennies)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-13
Updated: 2012-11-13
Packaged: 2017-11-18 13:32:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trycatpennies/pseuds/incendiary1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how they are, this is how they'll always be. Derek and Chris have a tenuous balance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back and Forth

Derek shows up at the Argent’s because he has nowhere else to go. The pack is at his place, bickering, fear making them petty. They’re trying to come up with strategies to fend of the Alpha pack. They keep looking to Derek for answers, and Derek’s coming up empty.

He knows Allison’s not around; he’d left her at the house with Scott. He knows Chris Argent is by himself (wife dead, sister dead, father in law, missing, presumed dead) and he stands on the porch waiting. He knows Chris knows he’s there.

Sure enough, the door opens after a few seconds of Derek standing there, and Chris steps out onto the porch, flicking on the light, illuminating the space with a soft blue glow. The gun he’s holding in one hand is incongruous with the sweatpants he’s wearing, the soft threadbare shirt. The gun is not, however, incongruous with the defensive, wary look on Chris’ face. 

“Mr. Hale,” he says, and Derek almost flinches. Chris’ voice is like ice over steel. God, what is he even doing here. “What can I do for you this evening?”

Derek slouches a little further into his jacket, shoving his hands in his pockets. He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to be anywhere, honestly. He’s got nowhere left to hide. 

“What do you do when you don’t have any answers?” He asks, and Chris blinks at him, lowering the gun to his side. “When they’re asking you, when they’re depending on you, and you’ve got nothing to give them.”

Derek knows the hierarchy, knows that the women of the Argent clan are the leaders. He also knows that with Kate gone, and with Chris’ wife dead, that Allison is next in line. But she’s too young, even for the hunter’s so Derek’s assuming Chris is defacto leader, until Allison’s ready. It’s the closest thing to an Alpha the hunters have and it makes Chris the closest to an equal that Derek can think of. 

“I lie. I tell them exactly what they want to hear and then I find a way to make it work.” Chris answers, and he leans against the porch rail, crossing his arms. When Derek looks up at him, Chris looks tired, and something in Derek aches, because he knows that’s how he looks, most of the time. Just goddamn tired.

“They’re going to get hurt,” Derek says, and that’s the crux of it. No matter how hard he tries to protect them, prepare them, they always get hurt. 

“People get hurt,” Chris says, and where Derek would assume his voice to be callous, Chris sounds like he’s trying for comfort. 

“You mean _my_ people get hurt,” Derek answers, defensively, and Chris smiles, keeping eye contact. 

“There’ve been losses on both sides, Derek. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

The truce is tenuous, at best. There’s a reason Chris is carrying a gun out to meet him, and there’s a reason Derek doesn’t begrudge him that. He is, however, a little surprised that it’s no longer pointed at his chest, and that Chris has let down his guard enough that he’s a little lost in thought, enough that Derek can watch him, like this. He can hear Chris’ heartbeat, even and steady, and he can smell him, soap and aftershave and the clean metallic scent of the gun in his hand. 

“Derek,” Chris sighs, rubbing his hand over his face, breaking the moment. “Why are you here?”

Derek’s already answered that, but not really, and they both know it. 

“I didn’t have anyone to talk to,” he admits, grudgingly. Chris frowns, and shakes his head. 

“I’m not that person, I can’t be. Not for you.”

They’re here though, aren’t they? Derek nods, moves to step off the porch. Chris could shoot him now, put a wolfsbane bullet in his back and leave Derek to die. The truce means he won’t, but Derek knows they’re both thinking it.

“I won’t come again,” Derek says, without turning. He hears Chris sigh, barely audible, and then Derek’s running. 

-

Three days later Chris is at the train station. He smells like ash and wolf, though, and Derek assumes the Hale house had been Chris’ first stop.

“New place?” Chris asks, and Derek keeps his distance. He’s going to have to relocate, he’s already thinking of different places. Beacon Hill is only so big. Chris prowls around, picks up chains and a few stray scribbles of possible patrol schedules. One of Isaac’s textbooks. 

“Allison isn’t here,” Derek says, after watching Chris run his fingers over the rough hewn wood of the Hale family trunk. He knows that’s not why Chris is here, but he’s fighting the wolf down, the need to reclaim everything Chris is touching, mask the scent with his own. 

“No, she’s not. She’s at home, with Scott and Stiles. And one other. Erica?” Chris’ voice is questioning, but he’s posturing. Chris knows each wolf in Derek’s pack as well as Derek knows the hunters. It’s just good strategy. Doesn’t explain why Chris is here. “Anyway, I’m not here for that. I’m repaying the visit.”

The porch. Derek feels his claws lengthen, the wolf threatened and cautious. He doesn’t say anything though. Clearly Chris came with something to say. 

“You know Allison blames you for her mother’s death?” Chris says, and he leans against one of the support pillars. Derek keeps himself carefully non-responsive; he knows Chris is watching. “I don’t, though.”

That’s surprising. 

“I bit her,” Derek says, and he knows the consequences of that, for the Argents. He’d done it _because_ of the consequences. 

“All’s fair,” Chris says, and Derek knows that he’s excusing Kate’s sins, Gerard’s, and his own when he exonerates Derek. 

“So are you saying we’re even?” Derek retracts his claws. He doesn’t sound as bitter as he wants to. He’s pretty sure he sounds surprised. He’s praying he doesn’t sound hopeful.

Chris doesn’t answer, but he pushes off the post, advancing a little on Derek. There’s still a good six feet between them, and there’s plenty of space for Derek to get out if he needs to. Chris is smart enough not to corner him, at least. 

“You asked me what I do when I don’t have any answers left to give,” Chris starts, and he looks like he’s considering Derek, sizing him up for something. Derek doesn’t rise to the challenge, but it takes some effort. He’d rather hear the rest of Chris’ thought, though. “What do you want to hear, Derek?

“Get out,” Derek says, shakily, and Chris smirks, turning his back on Derek. Like Derek isn’t even a threat. 

The door slams behind Chris, and Derek slumps, exhausted. 

-

Derek dreams of running through the woods, of the smell of gunmetal and Chris’ aftershave, of bloodied claws and torn up skin.

He wakes up sweating and hard, and he jerks off rough and quick, coming over his fist and cursing. 

-

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t-”

“I get it. You can’t watch her yourself, so I get to babysit,” Derek growls, and Chris cracks his knuckles, and Derek can smell desperation and frustration. Chris wants to be able to protect his own, but here he is, on the front porch of his own house, asking Derek to help.

“When the threat is from within, I don’t have a choice. She isn’t safe with me. For once, you’re the better choice.”

“What’s in it for me?” Derek asks, even though they both know he’s going to do it. Allison’s nearly pack; pack takes care of each other. 

“I’ll owe you one,” Chris admits, begrudgingly. It’s a lot, owing Derek a favour. It’s currency. Something for Derek to use. 

“Drop her off at the house, not the station. I don’t trust the new betas this close to the moon,” Derek says, and he steps off the porch steps. “I’ll watch her myself.”

-

Chris has Derek pinned, an arrow through his shoulder and buried three inches deep into an oak tree on the other side. Chris’ fingers are wrapped around Derek’s throat and his voice is menacing, deep.

“Did you want to cash in that favour?” 

Derek wrenches his shoulder, detaching arrow from oak tree, and manages a good swipe into Chris’ side, before he bares his fangs. 

“I’m gonna save it for when I’m in some kind of real danger, thanks,” Derek says, and Chris smirks, thumbing at the cut Derek’s claws have opened up on his ribs. 

-

“Now,” Derek says, and Scott pops his shoulder back into place while Derek practically roars in pain. 

“I don’t understand why Mr. Argent did this? I thought we had a truce?” Scott asks, and Derek ignores him. “There wasn’t even a fight, he just like, randomly attacked you in the woods?”

“It’s a long story,” Derek grits out, but unfortunately Scott’s never known enough to leave him alone, and Derek drops into bed fully clothed, glaring at Scott when he follows into the back of the station. 

“But I just don’t get it, I thought the whole point of the truce was-” 

“He owes me a favor, and he’s trying to get me to cash in on it on his terms,” Derek explains, and he toes his shoes off, exhausted. 

“For watching Allison?” Scott asks, and Derek blinks at him. 

“She told you?” Derek hadn’t told anyone, assuming Chris would have preferred it that way. 

“Yeah, she said her dad asked you, or something,” Scott says, and he seems satisfied with the series of events as he now understands them. Good, maybe he’ll leave Derek alone. “I wondered, when she said it, why you’d have said ok. I mean, you don’t even like them.”

Derek doesn’t answer, and Scott gives up, tromping up the station stairs and leaving Derek alone, finally. 

-

He barely remembers getting there, but he falls out of his car and onto the Argent’s driveway, and retches up black tar blood onto the cement. 

He smells Allison, who presses a palm to his face and then one to his side, where there’s a wolfsbane laced arrow sticking from between two ribs. He looks up at her, blinks blearily.

“Tell your dad I’m calling in that favor.” 

He passes out. 

-

Derek comes to underground, and he has a flash of fear and panic, because it smells just enough like Kate-

But Kate’s dead, and he’s here by choice, in the Argent’s basement, not in the tunnels beneath his old house. 

He opens his eyes and takes stock; he’s handcuffed, but he’s lying on a cot, one arm chained to the headboard. He touches his side with his free hand, but he’s healed, and he sighs in relief, drops his head to the pillow and lets himself breathe, just for a second. 

“Comfortable?” Chris asks, and Derek starts, yanking on the chain around his wrist.

“You didn’t have to chain me up,” Derek says, and he pulls on it again. “Not close enough to the moon for me to lose control.”

“You were injured, and I’m keeping you in my home. With my very human daughter,” Chris says, and he sits back in the chair he’s got pulled up near Derek’s makeshift bed. “Besides, you weren’t exactly coherent when you showed up. I figured, considering the circumstances, better safe than sorry.”

“Excellent philosophy,” Derek says, throwing as much sarcasm as he can into the smile he shoots Chris. “Can you unchain me now?” 

“No,” Chris answers, and Derek growls, frustrated, but all Chris is doing is smiling at him, considering. “I think we’re not quite done yet.”


End file.
